ArticleInternational journal of clinical and health psychology : IJCHP
Can transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) of the cerebellum improve implicit social and cognitive sequence learning?
Article in International journal of clinical and health psychology : IJCHP. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 11 citations in OpenAlex.
- Unveiling the role of cerebellar alterations in the autonomic nervous system: a systematic review of autonomic dysfunction in spinocerebellar ataxias.Journal of neurology · 2023Pooled it
- Cerebellar anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) improves implicit mentalizing sequence learning: A double-blind sham-controlled study.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- Cerebellar Neuromodulation in Autism Spectrum Disorders and Social Cognition: Insights from Animal and Human Studies.Cerebellum (London, England) · 2025Review
- Cerebellar Neurostimulation for Boosting Social and Affective Functions: Implications for the Rehabilitation of Hereditary Ataxia Patients.Cerebellum (London, England) · 2024Review
- The Predictive Role of the Posterior Cerebellum in the Processing of Dynamic Emotions.Cerebellum (London, England) · 2024Article
- Excitatory cerebellar transcranial direct current stimulation boosts the leverage of prior knowledge for predicting actions.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2024Article
- The cerebellum is involved in implicit motor sequence learning.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2024Article
- Cerebellar non-invasive stimulation of social and emotional mentalizing: A meta-analysis.Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2024Article
- Brain stimulation for chronic pain management: a narrative review of analgesic mechanisms and clinical evidence.Neurosurgical review · 2023Review
- Exciting the social butterfly: Anodal cerebellar transcranial direct current stimulation modulates neural activation during predictive social mentalizing.International journal of clinical and health psychology : IJCHPArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
9 authors at 1 institution in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Accumulating evidence shows that the posterior cerebellum is involved in mentalizing inferences of social events by detecting sequence information in these events, and building and updating internal models of these sequences. By applying anodal and sham cerebellar transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) on the posteromedial cerebellum of healthy participants, and using a serial reaction time (SRT) task paradigm, the current study examined the causal involvement of the cerebellum in implicitly learning sequences of social beliefs of others (Belief SRT) and non-social colored shapes (Cognitive SRT). Apart from the social or cognitive domain differences, both tasks were structurally identical. Results of anodal stimulation (i.e., 2 mA for 20 min) during the social Belief SRT task, did not show significant improvement in reaction times, however it did reveal generally faster responses for the Cognitive SRT task. This improved performance could also be observed after the cessation of stimulation after 30 min, and up to one week later. Our findings suggest a general positive effect of anodal cerebellar tDCS on implicit non-social Cognitive sequence learning, supporting a causal role of the cerebellum in this learning process. We speculate that the lack of tDCS modulation of the social Belief SRT task is due to the familiar and overlearned nature of attributing social beliefs, suggesting that easy and automatized tasks leave little room for improvement through tDCS.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.